Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 18:14:27 -0700
From: Ron Buckmire
Subject: UConn Military Recruiters Face High Court Test
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News from the ACLU National Headquarters
Connecticut High Court Hears Gay Law Students'
Challenge to Military Recruitment on Campus
Ruling Could Impact Recruiting Programs at Other State Universities
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts: Denny Lee, ACLU National
Tuesday, October 24, 1995 (212) 944-9800
ext. 424
Philip
Tegeler, Connecticut CLU
(203)
247-9823
(New Haven, CONN., Oct. 23) In a major test of the military's
discriminatory recruitment program at colleges and schools, the Connecticut
Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday, Oct. 24 in a lawsuit brought
against a state-funded university for allowing military officials to
discriminate against lesbian and gay students on campus.
The lawsuit, brought by the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union and the
American Civil Liberties Union in 1992 on behalf of the Gay and Lesbian Law
Students Association at the University of Connecticut, charges that the
school violated the state's civil rights law for allowing organizations that
discriminate to recruit students on state-owned property.
"This is an important test of the state's gay civil rights law, at the
state's own law school," said Philip Tegeler, acting legal director at the
Connecticut CLU, who will be arguing the case before a five-judge panel of
the state's highest court. "We're asking the law school to enforce its
non-discrimination policies equally for all campus recruiters."
The case is on appeal from the Hartford Superior Court which held, in July
1994, that the UConn School of Law gave the military "license to discriminate
through the use of the school's facilities." Judge Frances Allen ruled that
the law school violated the state's human rights law, and permanently barred
the school from allowing the military to use school facilities for recruiting
purposes.
The human rights law, passed in 1991, prohibits discrimination based on
sexual orientation in employment, public accommodations, education, housing,
and credit. Connecticut is one of nine
states including California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey,
Rhode Island, Vermont,
and Wisconsin that have laws protecting lesbians and gay men from
discrimination. About 150
municipalities nationwide have enacted similar laws.
Although no federal law currently protects the basic right of lesbians and
gay men to be free from
discrimination, President Clinton has recently come out in support of pending
federal legislation that
would establish such protection in the workplace.
Around the country, the military's recruitment ban on gay students has been
drawing increasing
protests on college campuses. About a dozen universities and law schools
have voluntarily prohibited
military officials from recruiting because of its anti-gay policy. Some
schools, like UConn, have been
sued over allowing military recruiting programs.
In New York, the state's highest court ruled that the city of Rochester
could ban military recruiters
from its schools because of the military's policy against gay men and
lesbians. The lawsuit was brought by a 17-year-old Rochester high school
student in 1991.
"As long as the military continues to discharge lesbian and gay
servicemembers, it has no place in
the public schools and universities in this country," said Marc E. Elovitz,
staff attorney at the ACLU's
national Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, and co-counsel in the case. "The
University of Connecticut
violated state law, as well as it own non-discrimination policy, by opening
its doors to discrimination
and subjecting its students to unequal treatment. No student should be
deprived of opportunities and
educational benefits because of their sexual orientation."
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